


Happy When It Rains

by mad_like_a_lynx



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 1980s, Alcohol, Ash is angry and destroys things, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Dino is mentioned but not in it, Drug Use, Gen, His relationship with Shorter is complicated, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Angel Eyes, Pre-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 21:09:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18290288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_like_a_lynx/pseuds/mad_like_a_lynx
Summary: Ash and Eiji's feet were hanging off the end of the truck bed now. Dirty red hi-tops and a polished pair of leather loafers, side by side, as different from one another as the men who wore them.Shorter knew that he lost something to Eiji that night.___Shorter's friendship with Ash was complicated.





	Happy When It Rains

 

 

 

 

> _Look at me enjoying something_
> 
> _That feels like_
> 
> _feels like pain_
> 
> _To my brain_
> 
>  
> 
> \- Jesus and the Mary Chain, _Happy When it Rains_

 

_1983_

 

"It's up here."

 The beam from Shorter's flashlight bounced off the walls of the subway tunnel.  Ash’s  careful foot steps followed behind, quiet despite the stale water covering the tracks. 

It had been ages since he last made his way down here, into the tunnels beneath Canal Street. 

Probably with Lao, fucking around with a Walkman, a fresh stash of skunk weed and that old, well-loved nudie mag he stole years before (it was the one with that centerfold Lao was obsessed with, Shorter thinks; that girl with the tight lips and  just the right amount of hips), talking crap under the flashlight-lit gallery of graffiti.

That was before juvie. Before Ash.

Ash.

Shorter's flashlight flickered right before they reached their destination. He grumbled, promptly smacked it, then listened to Ash tease him about being too stupid to bring those extra batteries.

A little further, then he stopped. Ash seemed to have realized they reached their intended spot, as he threw his backpack against the far wall then stretched with a yawn. He didn't seem too impressed. Shorter gave his friend a pleased look and approached.

Ash wrinkled his nose. The exaggerated movement looked so foreign on his thin face that it made Shorter smile. "It smells down here." 

"It smells up there too," Shorter countered with a laugh. 

He gave the spot a look over and figured this space must have once been used for repairs. Today it was a graveyard of artifacts from both new and ye olde New York. It was interesting, seeing the old newspapers with headlines from the 50s mingle with the litter of bored teenagers, whom only hours ago left behind the faint smell of stale weed and cigarette smoke. 

"Nadia packed us some bao and coleslaw before we left." 

Ash's hands were going through the pockets of Shorter's jacket, which had moments ago been tossed on top of his bag. His hands reemerged with a pack of cigarettes. Before Ash could wrinkle his face in distaste at the menthols in his hand, he laughed.

"You're so strange, Shorter Wong." The lighter clicked,  green eyes burned red under the flame, then darkness and the faint glow of a cigarette.

Shorter looked down at his friend before grabbing the cigarettes and the bag containing their lunches. "You're calling me strange?" 

"Yeah," Ash replied. His voice was husky with puberty, but still smooth and enticing. Shorter wondered if he would ever not be fascinated by this kid. "You have your sister pack picnic lunches to eat in some abandoned, filthy subway? You know this is where hobos come to shit, right?"

"Sure," Shorter said with a grin. 

The lunches came out but weren't eaten. In the clouds of cigarette smoke, the two boys began to lay claim to the spot, just as Shorter did countless times before under a thick haze of weed and drinks with friends. This looked and smelled very familiar, but with Ash everything was new. 

They let themselves be modern cavemen; got out the paint, relieved themselves in the corner, got to work.

Shorter filled his paint marker the night before, so it was drippy with black ink. It got all over his and Ash's hands and dyed them black, spotting their fingers like little sores. 

Within minutes both boys were giggling over a menagerie of badly drawn dicks and animals dripping with paint. 

Shorter watched as the younger boy drew a cat on the wall in the darkness, thick and simple black lines contrasting against the backlit white of his arms. 

It was like watching an anxious tiger set free from his cage; Ash was curious and exploring, exposing himself in giggles and paint, claws dripping with black ink instead of red blood. Even like this, covered in ink and scrawling crude drawings on a grungy wall a mile beneath Canal Street, he was beautiful. 

If it were not for the worn handle of a gun jutting out from the back of his jeans, the boy who was not quite a child would have finally looked like one. 

When they sat for their lunch and more cigarettes, the smell of pork and leeks mixing with the musk of aged grime, a roar bellowed. 

Shorter pushed his back up against the cold brick and looked up, then told Ash with his hands to do the same. 

The room shook as the train howled above. Scattered light filtered into the abandoned station, dancing on the walls. The graffiti sparkled like stained glass around them, unreal and magical, isolating the world they shared from the streets of Manhattan: the Northern Lights of New York's underground.

 When Shorter glanced at Ash, he saw him smiling. Green eyes flashed with the glow of the train, staring in wonder, alive.

 The light left with the train and covered them in darkness, their flashlight burned out a while ago.

 In the darkness, Shorter could sense his friend moving closer until he felt hot breath on his face. The smell of leeks and cigarettes, of Ash. 

 This wasn't the first time Ash kissed him, but it was the first time it felt this gentle.

 There was something strange and unnerving about it, but Shorter knew that he received something special. His pants tightened uncomfortably and he squirmed; predictably, Ash laughed.

 "Thank you for taking me here, Shorter." Ash's eyes glowed with his cigarette.

 

* * *

_1982_

 

Ash was many things, but most of all he was a juxtaposition.

It was a chilly October morning when Ash showed up at the Chang Dai, wet like a drowned rat and clutching a meager amount of plastic-wrapped possessions.

Apparently, the day before he got released from juvie and somehow managed to walk there from New Jersey.

Nadia gave him ointment and bandages for his blistering feet, then sent him upstairs with a steaming bowl of wonton soup. As he ate, Shorter tried to imagine the boy walking down the highway by himself for countless hours, clutching his belongings and bleeding through his shoes. When Shorter asked why he hadn't just hitched a ride, Ash went silent.

Shorter wondered many things. Among them, how this kid ended up in New Jersey in the first place, or why he walked from there to the Chang Dai.

Eventually he would know the answers to all of these questions, but for now, he allowed himself tiny glimpses into Ash's life by way of the meager possessions that he carried with him:

A rosary, an old beaten up vinyl record ('Harvest' by Neil Young), two worn Fishbone-brand t-shirts and a pair of thin-wired frames. The glasses were Gucci.

Yeah, Ash was a juxtaposition. He came to his door covered in dirt, wearing a $3 thrift store denim jacket and pocketing a pair of thousand dollar glasses. Another day it would be other small things, unassuming pieces of jewelry or expensive sneakers, paired with knee-torn jeans and t-shirts drawn over in marker.

Ash asked if he could keep his belongings there, which Shorter agreed to with a shrug. The record and the rosary went into a box under his bed.

"I had no idea you were religious," Shorter told him.

They were both sitting on his mattress now, worn and hard against their asses. It felt surreal, being here in the real world with Ash. He only knew him to exist in that small cell, in that uniform, in the fluorescent lights of the library or under the oak tree in the yard. The Ash back then owned nothing but a glare and a battered old book.

"I'm not," Ash responded with a look. There was an edge to his voice, almost as if he were daring Shorter to ask more about it.

"Well, the rosary. You took it with you."

"It's not mine." Ash's words were careful but loaded. Shorter began to wonder if maybe these items once belonged to somebody Ash cared about deeply.

The idea seemed a curious one. It was hard to imagine this being the same boy who in juvie, only months ago, nearly crushed another kid's heart like a paper cup. It was strange: this beautiful boy, who laughed after nearly killing a man, clutching a record and rosary to his heart as if they were the most precious items in the world.

It would be years until Shorter realized that these items must have belonged to his brother.

"These pants are riding up my ass."

"They look good on you," Shorter smirked.

Ash was decked out in Shorter's old clothes, staples from before his growth spurt at sixteen. Tight faux-leather pants, a tee which once cleanly shown Shorter's muscles, but now draped over Ash's small frame until he shoved the hems into his pants. The t-shirt had a roaring tiger on it. Shorter fondly remembered getting high on St. Mark's Place before stealing it from a shop manned by an old punk with a green mohawk.

 It was the day after Ash showed up at their doorstep, and Shorter insisted on going up to Chelsea to party. If Ash objected to this, he didn't say. 

"Is this club really in a church?" Ash looked in the mirror now, turning his blonde eyelashes black. Shorter meanwhile cleaned up his hair; it finally started to grow back in, thin and whispy.

"Why? You scared of committing sin in the house of _God?_ ” 

“Shut up, Shorter. You're the last person who should say anything about sin."

 Shorter's cheeks burned. Was he really still going on about that damn Christmas card angel? He was thirteen, maybe jacked to it four times _at most_ , and always felt so horny that his dick would have been happy to say hello to almost anything.

"Hey, come here for a second." Ash looked up from the mirror and glanced at him curiously. He appeared cautious, body tense. His shoulders relaxed when he saw Shorter held a palette of colorful makeup in his hands.

Shorter continued, "Stay still, okay?"

 He dipped a brush in a dark pink color then began to paint his friend's face, applying streaks of bold color from his eyelid up to his brow. His strokes were careful but clumsy, and he grinned when Ash laughed nervously at not only the ridiculousness of what they were doing but the fine bristles tickling his face.

 Pink makeup shone brilliantly over Ash's porcelain-white skin. The new colors on his face made his green eyes glow.

He looked back into the mirror and took in his new reflection, touching the painted skin that now made him a part of Shorter's world. One of glam makeup and purple mohawks, piercings and leather pants. The paint was sloppy and messy over his right eye, but he liked it.

 "Let me do you next."

 "Sure," Shorter agreed.

 Ash took an eyebrow pencil and began to draw little shapes onto Shorter's face. Two tiny stars, a little heart. His friend gave him a sly smirk when Shorter looked in the mirror, capping the pencil.

 That was the closest they ever were, and Ash obviously noticed before Shorter did. But it made Shorter's heart happy that Ash did not seem to mind.

 

They took the 1 train uptown.

 It was 1982 and The Limelight was new. And just like Ash, it was a juxtaposition.

Rows of stained glass windows gazed down upon the young worshippers of music and drugs, and just like a Sunday mass, the room was full of those pulsating bodies.

The club was hot and loud and Shorter was covered in sweat. He and Ash arrived an hour earlier, and Ash learned that Shorter was a friend of the bouncer working the door that night. At the bar, they were each given a cap'n and coke alongside two tabs of ecstasy. Shorter seemed to be friends with everybody.

 Ecstasy had a metamorphic effect on Ash. He gave Shorter a small smile before he swallowed the pill, but once the chemicals hit his system it became wide and genuine.

 Then Ash seemed lost. At first, Shorter thought he was overwhelmed by the unfamiliar, but as the ecstasy kicked in and Ash started to awkwardly move his body with the music, silly and unsure enough to make even the worst of dancers embarrassed, he realized that this wasn't the case.

 Ash's thin wrists and arms moved sloppily yet somehow delicately in the air. New Order's Blue Monday pulsated through the bodies and walls of the church, going straight into Shorter's bones.

 "I can touch the notes," Ash proclaimed before moving his awkward dance closer to his friend. Shorter barely heard him over the music, but soon they were facing each other and moving to the same rhythm.

 Ash's ghostly skin absorbed the flashing lights in the room as he moved, pale white turning from red to blue to green to purple.

 This dangerous boy, the one said to have the eyes of a demon, danced stupidly in a church of sin. He changed colors like a chameleon.

It was beautiful to watch, another juxtaposition.

Thin arms wrapped around Shorter. That was the first time Ash kissed him, on the corner of his mouth.

 "I like you, Shorter." Ash's voice weighed heavy with the ecstasy, and his hands were rubbing Shorter's arm. It felt good.

 "No, you don't," Shorter laughed and pushed him away. "You know that stuff won't work on me."

 Ash gave a pout and a view of his tongue, playful yet daring. "I do. You're kind to me."

 More than ever he wondered what happened to this kid.

 "Dance with me," Ash demanded. He lit a cigarette and danced with it, taking a drag before seductively offering it to Shorter. Shorter took it, but raised an eyebrow.

 "What do you think we've been doing?" He breathed in smoke.

 An hour passed and Shorter had his eye on a girl. She reminded him of a girl he dated once.

 Ear-length black hair, bronze skin, and deep brown eyes intoxicated with dance, beer, and drugs. Patterns of color painted her face, making those eyes even more pronounced. Her clothes were simple but stylish, Shorter liked it.

 He and the ex never got very far in their relationship, but those few months were full of good memories. He took her home to his family, where his parents cooked a large traditional meal and his sister teased him all night. Shorter felt pride when his parents said they liked her. Two months later his parents were dead and the girlfriend became the ex.

 Ash noticed him staring. He looked neither upset nor encouraging, simply distant. His body moved less now.

 "Are you going to talk to her?" He asked.

 "Probably." He took another drag on the cigarette to give him courage, then shot Ash two thumbs up. "Wish me luck!"

 "You're gonna need it," Ash scoffed. The pink makeup around his eye was beginning to smear. "I've already danced with you and I can say that you reek of B.O."

 Shorter laughed. He had no idea if Ash was serious or even a little jealous. Either way, he parted with his friend, moving instead towards the girl with those soft brown eyes.

He bought her a drink, they chatted, they danced, and they discovered that they had nothing in common.  But she was nice to dance with and Shorter enjoyed the feeling of a woman's legs grinding against his own. Her dress was thin and Shorter moaned into her mouth, she wasn't a bad kisser.

It was nice until it wasn't, then he needed to take a piss.

 The bathroom was a gallery of trash, graffiti, and sex. Shorter stood at the urinal to relieve himself when he heard the clatter of bodies against a stall and a stifled moan. He finished and stuffed his dick back into his pants, he always got too curious.

 They had not bothered to close the stall. Inside sat an older punk, maybe mid-20s, arched against the toilet seat, hair completely shaved other than a tuft of unnaturally orange hair in the middle of his head. His denim vest heaved with his chest, plaid pants and skull buckle around his ankles on the floor. In front of him, on his knees, was Ash.

 He knew what his friend got up to in and out of juvie. They even talked about it. But seeing it was different.

The man on the toilet remained oblivious, breathing long moans as he fucked Ash's mouth. His friend noticed him however, the kid was perceptive and sharp. He didn't stop what he was doing, simply glanced back at Shorter without turning his head.

Shorter remembered the first time that he ever saw Ash seduce a man, the look in his eyes when he noticed Shorter watching. It screamed, almost mockingly, _look at what I can do._ Shorter felt startled then, seeing how effortlessly this boy could mold men like putty with his body or a knife.

 This was different. The eyes staring back at him looked sad, almost humiliated. Some of the pink makeup smeared over the tiger on his shirt. He was a child.

 Shorter felt sick.

 When Ash emerged from the bathroom, he found Shorter at the bar. The ecstasy had worn off an hour ago.

Ash kept wiping his mouth on his sleeve and Shorter dragged on his cigarette so that he could taste mint instead of the creeping bile in his throat. The strobe lights stilled, painting both of their bodies red.

 "Let's get out of here," Shorter finally said, and they left the club. The city air was much less suffocating.

 

 

* * *

_1985_

 

From the very beginning, Shorter knew whatever he and Ash had, whatever that was, would not last.

 He did not know when or how it would end, just that it would.

Shorter believed it happened that time they were in Cape Cod, when he came to realize just how little he knew about his friend. 

He discovered that Ash's family consisted of a living father and an older brother who had once loved folk music, Oscar Wilde and filling books with poetry. And despite what Ash told him and the others, there was a mother who was quite easy to find in a cemetery outside of Boston. (Her chart claimed that she succumbed to an eightball of coke. Or Kaposi's sarcoma. Griffin once told Max that the hospital was not sure which actually killed her first.)

 But most of all, it was when Max and that Ibe guy were trying to repair the truck. They were finally taking a breather when Max asked Shorter to retrieve something from the truck bed.

It was a perfect night. There were crickets and the chatter of gulls, a deep black sky poked full of holes, and a roll of ocean waves that equaled the steady tempo of the wind.

 Then, there was the night before. The three of them lay in the tall grass, still wet with sea water, skin rough with sand and smelling thickly of salt. The grass felt soft beneath their bodies and the stars were bright. Ash told them both stories about the sky.

He never quite said, but Shorter gathered that these must have been stories his brother once told him.

 Eiji followed with a tale of a rabbit who pounded rice into mochi on the moon. Shorter smiled when Eiji's fingers traced over the shape of a rabbit in the sky and Ash finally saw it. There was something wonderful about Ash when he was a child again, and Shorter felt happy that he could finally share this side of his friend.

 Ash smiled more often now. 

 Shorter wasn't sure if he felt jealous or simply frustrated. He wanted to help Ash with the ease that Eiji could, and despite all of Shorter's efforts, the only thing Eiji ever needed to do for Ash was a smile.

As he made his way to the truck bed, Shorter heard voices. He couldn't see their faces, but the two shadows moved together behind the tarp. Ash was laughing and they were close. Then, Eiji tried a new name on his tongue.

 That was the moment Shorter realized that the boy known as Ash Lynx had never existed. For years he found himself wondering what made up this terrifying and wonderful boy, and not once did he expect for the answers to be so shockingly mundane. The facts given to him seemed so inappropriate for the boy that he knew, like pulling back a curtain to reveal an uncomfortable truth.

But the evidence was all there, in Ash's conversations with his father, in the pictures of a smiling little boy with bright green eyes and ashy blonde hair.

 No matter how otherworldly he could seem, Ash was still human; a troubled young boy with a drifter mother, an asshole drunk of a father, and a brother fucked-up by the jungles of Vietnam.

The realist in Shorter knew why Ash kept secrets from him. Telling anybody, even Shorter, about his brother was a risk. Revealing the truth behind Ash Lynx was another risk entirely.

Aslan Callenreese was the little boy Ash did not want people to see, a vulnerability that he was not yet ready to deal with. Shorter understood, there was a part of him who could only exist around Nadia, around his family. It felt comforting to know that Ash was the same.

 Shorter considered how the guys back home would greatly prefer the mythical origin of Ash Lynx over the story of a boy named Aslan Callenreese from Cape Cod. The truth was much too real, much too sad.

Ash and Eiji's feet were hanging off the end of the truck bed now. Dirty red hi-top Converses and a polished pair of leather loafers, side by side, as different from one another as the men who wore them.

 Shorter knew that he lost something to Eiji that night.

He greeted his friends warmly and hopped into the bed of the truck. It was still hard and cold on his ass, but his arm pressed against Eiji, who must have been the warmest man Shorter ever met.

In the end, Shorter decided that he was happy for Ash. His friend smiled and passed him a cigarette. 

 

* * *

_1983_

 

They left the subway after their lunch was gone. Ash decided that he wanted to throw rocks, so both boys made their way to the junkyard near the Chelsea Pier. 

On the walk there the Hudson shimmered under the yawning sun, there were maybe only a few hours of daylight left. 

The junkyard was packed with old cars, appliances, a school bus, and a subway car completely covered in graffiti. Ash and Shorter wrote their names on the metal body, pleased that they were immortalized here just as they were in the tunnels beneath New York.

 They wordlessly explored the hollow beast. Shorter lept up and grabbed the handrail, exaggeratedly swinging his body before showing off with a few full-motion pull-ups. Ash seemed visibly impressed and Shorter wagged his eyebrows at him. He laughed and left the car.

 Outside they settled for the bus as their target. Shorter found a crowbar, suggesting that they smash cars with it later. Ash meanwhile gathered a series of stones in his shirt. He let them roll to the ground at Shorter's feet.

 He started to chew a piece of gum, the faint pop and whiff of strawberry joining the chorus of waves and gulls and barking dogs. The traffic here was strangely quiet.

 "Aim for the windows?"

 "First who breaks one buys the other lunch."

 Ash rolled his eyes, "With what money?" He threw the rock. It bounced off the bus door with a pleasant clank.

 Shorter knew that this wasn't quite true.

 "That... guy you live with. He's loaded, ain't he?"

 Shorter never knew how to classify 'that guy.' Father, guardian, sugar daddy? ...boyfriend?

 Ash always hesitated to answer almost any questions when it came to Dino.

Shorter threw his own rock. It bounced off a window and disappeared into the brush. Damn.

 "I don't want to owe him anything," Ash's response sounded careful, it always did.

Shorter now knew Ash lived in this fancy house in New Jersey; that was where he had come from when he showed up at the Chang Dai a year ago, clutching his meager possessions as blood stained his sneakers. 

Nobody in a good place ever walked that many miles in order to crash with their two-month bunk-buddy from prison.

Ash's brows were furrowed now. He gripped the rock tightly in his hand then let it fly. It sparkled briefly in the sun before it hit a window, managing but a crack. The boy stomped his foot frustrated, impatient and angry. Shorter should have never brought up Dino.

"This is stupid," Ash decided. "I want to actually destroy something." Shorter shrugged and followed him down the path. The sky darkened with clouds and Shorter casually commented that it might rain. Ash, true to his mission, wasn't listening.

 The teen laughed when his friend came back carrying two glass bottles topped with a tad of crude oil. The paint on Ash's hands was mixed with oil now.

 They filled the bottles with vodka. Ash gave an anecdote about being happy that the drink went untouched during lunch, as this was way more fun.

 Both boys climbed up a throne made of trash and cars. They were satisfied with the view.

 "Which one are you gonna aim for?" Shorter found an old t-shirt and tore it into strips, one got shoved into the bottle's neck.

 "That one," Ash pointed to an old black car. Shorter wasn't too familiar with cars or what make and model this one was, but he could guess that back in the day it had probably been pretty nice.

 A click of their lighter and the wick lit up. Both boys hollered in joy at the hungry fire, but Ash didn't throw it right away. Instead, he watched as the wick became greedily devoured by the flame. Shorter suddenly stepped back, unsure. His fear of Ash stayed back at juvie, but there was a strange look in his eyes. It made him uneasy.

Just as Shorter stepped up to intervene, Ash released a blood-curdling yell; and with it, the bottle flew. The black car exploded into happy, hungry flames. Cars in the vicinity blared their alarms, screaming in unison with the boy high above them.

At times Ash was so otherworldly, that Shorter would not have been surprised if he started to glow and levitated right off the ground. Watching this small boy raise his arms up to the sky, Shorter was mesmerized. His figure was backlit by fire and his silhouette was shining. He was so beautiful.

There truly was nobody like Ash Lynx.

 The fire did not survive as long as they thought it would, and the rain started soon after. Ash stared at his handiwork, black with tar and soot as a tiny flame licked the skeletal remains. It fought against the rain, struggling to survive. A police car hummed in the distance.

 Shorter was getting soaked and so was Ash. His blonde hair stuck to his face with rain and a sad smile peaked on his lips.

 Ash turned that smile onto Shorter then stared up at the sky. Rain pelted his face, dripping into his mouth and nose.

 Shorter smiled back and watched him get soaked in the rain. He felt privileged to be the one who got to observe this tiny flame fighting in a rainstorm, slowly becoming aware that he was alive.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I loved Angel Eyes, since it was great seeing Ash from a different perspective. 
> 
> I was driving home and the story's namesake came on the radio, couldn't get the image of Shorter watching Ash in the rain out of my head.
> 
> Anyway, this is my gift to all ye great people on Banana Discord. Thanks for giving me the inspiration to actually write a story of my own!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
